Where you live when studying at University in Adelaide can determine future success.

Year 12 is finally over. All your studying, stressing and submitting assignments has paid off and you’ve been offered a place at a university in Adelaide. Maybe you got into Medicine at the University of Adelaide or Engineering at UniSA or Business at Flinders University. Regardless of your chosen degree, you’re living the dream. You’ll go to university and with your high scores land an exclusive internship, travel abroad, get offered a job and soon enough, you are power-striding down the city street with a coffee-to-go and a briefcase. That’s a dream you grow up with.

But maybe, it remains only a dream.

Beginning uni is a big step, one that is often underestimated. When you take that step you are surrounded by new people in a new place, without anyone pestering you to do house chores or to hand in that assignment or study for an exam. Unfortunately, according to a new report on Australian universities, drop out rates at universities around Australia have reached record highs, with more than one in five first-year students leaving their chosen course [1] (Hare, J 2016).

But you can still live out your dream.

What if your new home-away-from-home while you studied in Adelaide made everything possible? What would it be like to have time, be supported and have friends all before the first week of uni?

Imagine moving into your new home a week before university starts. After being squashed in the backseat of a car filled with luggage you’re greeted by the smiling faces of current residents. They help unload your bags with an infectious energy- they are just as excited to befriend you, as you are to meet them. They show you to your room, carrying your bags up three flights of stairs. Once you’ve set up a family picture, made your bed and checked out the window view you are swept away to a feast of lunch. For the first time you are sitting with people you will become friends with for years. The people opposite you are from Melbourne, Hobart, Perth and a few from across the globe.

When university starts, you can walk through the gates thinking of weekend plans with your new friends before your first lecture- sounds great, right?

Speaking of university, can you imagine being able to finish an assignment within a few days because you have the time? You don’t have to buy groceries and cook them- overcooking the pasta and burning the sauce because you’re too preoccupied about worrying about that looming deadline. You don’t have clean your ‘horizontal surfaces’ as my mum used to say, because your room is cleaned for you. You live in a place that believes time is a precious commodity that should be given to students. Time to study but also to exercise and socialise and relax.

A place that offers unwavering support. Support in the form of weekly, relevant tutorials that are a flight of stairs below your room and weekly sessions about how to build a resume and how to understand tax. Preparing you for the next part of your dream.

Once you have your degree, the next part is attaining a job. With increasing competition, you need an edge over your competitor. Imagine if just by the choice of accommodation while you studied, provided plentiful of opportunities that made you more attractive to a potential employer. A place that provides professional development, a chance to lead and support a team and get involved in the wider community. And don’t forget, hundreds of people have lived here before you, all excelling in their career now and still remembering their connections to where they lived.

This place- this amazing place can give you everything you need to make your dream a reality, it can happen, but only if you choose the right place to live.

I live at a residential college in Adelaide, a mere 20-minute walk from my university. I chose to come to Lincoln College because my older sister had also attended a residential college and the opportunities it presented to her were ones that I wanted for myself. Lincoln has given me everything I needed to succeed in my first year at university and it gave me more friends and memories than I ever expected. To anyone considering moving to a new place to attend university I would recommend a residential college because it allows you to do what you want.